ARTHUR KOESTLER RICHARD WRIGHT LOUIS FISCHER, IGNAZIO SILONE ANDR E GIDE STEPHEN SPENDER
we ex-Communists are the only people on your side who know what it’s all about.” And with that the talk veered to why so-and-so had ever become a Communist, and why he had or had not left the Party. When the argument began to boil up again, I said, ‘Wait. Tell me exactly what happened when you joined the Party-not what you feel about it now, but what you felt then.” So Koestler began the strange story of his meeting with Herr Schneller in the Schneidemiihl paper-mill; and suddenly I interrupted, “This should be a book,” and we began to discuss names of ex Communists capable of telling the truth about themselves.
At first our choice ranged far and wide, but before the night was out we decided to limit the list to half a dozen writers and journalists. We were not in the least interested either in swelling the Hood of anti-Communist propaganda or in pro viding an opportunity for personal apologetics. Our concern was to study the state of mind of the Communist convert, and the atmosphere of the period-from 1917 to 1939-when con version was so common. For this purpose it was essential that each contributor should be able not to relive the past-that is impossible-but, by an act of imaginative self-analysis, to recreate it, despite the foreknowledge of the present. As I well know, autobiography of this sort is almost impossible for the practical politician: his self-respect distorts the past in terms of the present. So-called scientillc analysis is equally mislead ing; dissecting the personality into a set of psychological and sociological causes, it explains away the emotions, which we wanted described. The objectivity we sought was thepower to recollect-if not in tranquillity, at least in “dispassion” and this power is rarely granted except to the imaginative writer.